Who knew they were $o valuable? (ROTFLMAO)

[Omega-TI]

[Byte Knight]

The $1 shipping is a deal-breaker for me...

[zzip]

7 minutes ago, Byte Knight said:

The $1 shipping is a deal-breaker for me...

What if I chip in 50 cents?

[Keatah]

It was the genesis of the home computer market. No other computer company in the 1970's was capable of doing what Apple did. Not Altair, not IMSAI, not Commodore. And arguably not even Atari. And it's a damned fine thing to own an Apple. Apple is still here. Atari is floundering and flipping flapjacks. IBM exited the PC market years ago - and while the PC eclipses anything Apple can do today, it wasn't all IBM's doings. The clone market provided the big push.

 

Yes. The only provenance needed with Apple I boards is that they be genuine. No fake repros allowed. These seemingly high ebay prices (they are not) only serve to fuel the fire. The next ones will go for 3x or 4x that.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Keatah

[wierd_w]

I dont care what people say, Woz is why Apple became a thing.  You could replace Jobs with any other aggressive salesman; Woz could not have been replaced.  His highly inventive use of COTS circuits to get maximal utilitarian value for the smallest price, and still produce a high quality design, is not a thing that is easily taught, and it came almost naturally to Woz.

 

The apple 1 was a freaking FEAT of genius.

[Keatah]

Ohh absolutely. Furthermore, one could say the Disk II controller card was his most elegant circuit ever. With its companion - the redesigned-for-Apple analog card for the Shugart SA400 mechanism - being somewhere in his top-ten list.

 

Many parts were saved and that allowed the drive to hit the market at around $400 give or take. It was moderately capacious at 143K per disk. And speedy too, clocking in at ~115,200 baud sustained read/write. That's like copying the whole disk in 25 seconds.

 

To have the best Woz experience I recommend the Apple II+ or //e. No higher. Those models really capture what early consumer computing was like. From gaming to practical business and scientific, the Apple II did it well. And there is plenty of Woz-written documentation and source available for study.

 

The Apple 1 nostalgic only to a few. And beyond the early hobbyist era, it wasn't very practical.

 

I will also argue that Jobs was equally important and not as replaceable as many like to believe. An example is the simplification of the Macintosh. We're all familiar with that. And also the simplification of portable music and mp3 players - a business initiative we're less familiar with. Sometimes you need a salesman or less-technical person to reign in and keep those engineers under control. Jobs did that.

 

The iPod and iTunes were the first easily usable and practical portable player that just worked. Especially under the Windows platform. It. Just. Worked. And that was a huge selling point. Once Sir Jobs passed away iTunes went to hell and morphed into something I don't recognize anymore. Therefore I stopped upgrading at version 9. We use 9 on our rec room and deck entertainment kiosks. Everyone knows how to use it. And those that don't figure it out rather quickly. That's something any prior platform wasn't able to accomplish.

 

Edited July 27, 2020 by Keatah

[+OLD CS1]

On 7/27/2020 at 6:14 PM, Keatah said:

~115,200 baud

Wait... we measure disk data speed in bits of audio data??

[Papalapa]

Wow! Shipping now it's 390$ instead of 1$. ¿?

[jhd]

Practically speaking, how would you even ship something that is "worth" $1.5 million? Would most courier services even accept something that high-valued? I shudder to think of the insurance premium if they did accept it.

 

  

[Keatah]

When I sell something in the 5 or 6 figures I personally deliver it.

[desiv]

On 7/15/2020 at 2:12 PM, Keatah said:

It was the genesis of the home computer market. No other computer company in the 1970's was capable of doing what Apple did. Not Altair, not IMSAI, not Commodore.

To be fair, the Apple I wasn't something a lot of people bought/used.  As for the home computer market, that really started with the Apple II and the rest of the trinity.  Tandy (Model 1) and Commodore (Pet 2001) did pretty well in that arena too.  

Not to take anything away from Apple, but the others were also important. 

And I think the TRS80 Model I was actually the best seller of those three.

By the time the ][Plus came out tho, Apple started rolling. 

[GameGeezer]

That system has been on eBay or over a year. GL to the seller, but I would rather hand build an Apple 1 for 900 USD than pay 1.5M USD for one.